Looking for something fun to read?

As promised, and by request, the Popular Reading Collection is expanding!  We've gotten our first shipment of new, fun books to read, and we'll be adding a lot more over the next year.  Look for books by Meg Cabot, Michelle Mead, Ellen Hopkins, Neil Gaiman, Maggie Stiefvater, Lee Child, and more.  YA, thrillers, mysteries, romances, and fantasy books just in time for the Thanksgiving and Winter Breaks.  Check out a few today. 

Want to request a particular book or author?  Contact Katie Yelinek.

 

Spotlight on... Balal Abouelenein

This is the next installment in a series of blog posts to help you get acquainted with some of the people who work in the library. Today we introduce you to one of our student workers.

What is your name? Balal Abouelenein “B”

What is your major? Undeclared, in pursuit of a degree in Digital Forensics as well as an Arabic major when it becomes available.

What do you do in the library? I am the building consultant for the library.  I provide technical support to faculty, staff, and students who use the library computers.

What do you enjoy most about your job? I like everything about my job. I enjoy fixing computers, troubleshooting all new challenges and problems as well as the old. However what I enjoy the most is helping people. For example, students will open an attached file, work on it for hours as it is due that day, then they click save without changing the save location. He or she then closes the paper and is unable to find it and feels it is lost. They then come to me in a panic, hoping I can find it. I then recover it and save it for them and you can just see the relief wash over them.

What’s the best class you’ve taken at BU? I’m only a sophomore and haven’t taken that many classes yet but so far, throughout my college career, Arabic class with Professor Yahya Laayouni has been my favorite class. Learning about languages and cultures and just other people in general is a great life experience and it makes us better well-rounded people.

What else do you want people to know about you? I am CompTIA A+ certified to fix computers. I want to work for a government agency after I graduate and catch bad guys.

Quote: “You can’t just jump to the top of the ladder. You have to take it one step at a time; otherwise you might trip and fall.”

Trials to video and music library databases

The Library is running several trials to a few video and music databases from Alexander Street Press and Naxos as well as JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments). If you're interested, please check them out and give us your feedback. Most of the trials end Nov. 30 (JoVE ends Dec. 31), and faculty and students may use them freely until then.

The databases are listed on the Databases A-Z page at the end under 'Trials' or you can access them using these links:

• Naxos Music Library - TRIAL ENDS NOV. 30 DEC.31, 2013
  Naxos Music Library [NML] is the world´s largest online classical music library. Currently, it offers streaming access to more than 88,900 CDs with more than 1,294,800 tracks, standard and rare repertoire. Over 800 new CDs are added to the library every month.
• Naxos Music Library - Jazz - TRIAL ENDS NOV. 30 DEC.31, 2013
  One of the subsets of the Naxos Music Library
• Naxos Spoken Word Library - TRIAL ENDS NOV. 30 DEC.31, 2013
  Naxos AudioBooks, just like Naxos Music, produces first-class performances and recorded sound.
• Naxos Video Library - TRIAL ENDS NOV. 30 DEC.31, 2013
  Streaming video library of classical music performances, opera, ballet, live concerts and documentaries.
• Naxos Online Sheet Music - TRIAL ENDS NOV. 30 DEC.31, 2013
  Sheet music for a wide variety of musical genres.
• Alexander Street Collections - TRIAL ENDS NOV. 30 DEC.31, 2013
  Gateway to all 80 Alexander Street Collections, including text, audio tracks, videos, images, and playlists. Collections cover literature; music; women's history; black history; psychological counseling and therapy; social and cultural history; drama, medical, theatre, film, and the performing arts; religion; sociology; and other emerging areas. For help in using, view their Video Tutorials.
• JoVE Science Education - TRIAL ENDS DEC. 31, 2013 Contains video demonstrations that teach laboratory fundamentals, including General Laboratory Techniques and Basic Methods in Cellular and Molecular Biology. Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is a peer reviewed, PubMed indexed journal devoted to the publication of biological, medical, chemical and physical research in a video format. 

As always, if you have any questions, Ask a Librarian!